Summitt wrestles with Lady Vols' challenge

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. {AP} Few coaches can come off their worst conference defeat and say they are enjoying their job. But few coaches are like Tennessee's Pat Summitt.

"You know I like this challenge," Summitt said Wednesday. "It is different."

This won't be another 39-0 dream season like 1998 for the Lady Vols. Losses to top-ranked Connecticut and No. 3 Louisiana Tech assured that.

But even a 27-point loss to Southeastern Conference rival and seventh-ranked Georgia on Monday isn't proving disheartening to Summitt.

For the mentor to six national champions, this is a new opportunity to do what she does best teach, analyze, rotate players and prepare for March.

"Right now, I feel like I am getting to go to work and try to figure some things out," she said. "That is what I am supposed to do. I want to help this team."

Summitt's list of concerns is long unforced errors, forced shots, lethargic movement and "a lack of commitment to playing as a team and attacking people at both ends five on five."

The Lady Vols (13-3 overall, 3-1 SEC) need improvement at all positions, but point guard is getting Summitt's immediate attention. Of Tennessee's season-high 29 turnovers against Georgia, 11 were committed at the point by junior starter Kristen Clement and freshman April McDivitt.

Summitt said the answer may be a "point guard by committee," rotating Clement, McDivitt and scoring guard Kara Lawson, another freshman.

Clement brings leadership to the position, but sometimes she is so focused on running a play "that we force things," Summitt said.

Summitt said the Lady Vols will begin this week experimenting with Clement and Lawson swapping places in the lineup.

But Summitt said she is also looking for more aggressive play under the boards, particularly from sophomore center Shalon Pillow, senior center Lashonda Stephens or freshman forward Tasheika Morris.

The loss of all-American Chamique Holdsclaw is becoming apparent to the Lady Vols for whom losses of any kind can be rare.

"We don't have a player that can take this game over. We don't have a Holdsclaw," Summitt said.

But with the exception of the Bridgette Gordon teams in the 1980s, no other Lady Vol squad has had that kind of impact player, either, Summitt said.

"The rest of those teams had to find a way to get the job done at both ends, together," she said. "And that is what this team has to do."